The majority of raw materials used by the chemical industry for the production of polymers and other purposes are typically derived from petroleum sources. The cost and availability of these raw materials are heavily influenced by the available petroleum supplies, which have been generally dwindling for approximately the last decade due to peaking world production capacity and increasing world demand. Because the global petroleum supply is a non-renewable resource, the future availability of petroleum and of raw materials derived from petroleum is not expected to improve.
As recoverable reserves of conventional petroleum become increasingly scarce and expensive to recover, interest in the recovery of heavy oil resources, such as bituminous sands (also known as oil sands and/or tar sands), is increasing. By some estimates, amounts of oil in place in known bituminous sand deposits may be larger than all remaining worldwide conventional petroleum reserves and is at least of the same order of magnitude as all remaining worldwide conventional petroleum reserves. However recovery of these resources is difficult and subject to numerous undesirable environmental consequences.
Oxidative hydrothermal dissolution (OHD) technology is an environmentally friendly technology that breaks down macromolecular organic materials using an oxidative bond cleavage process resulting in the generation of organic compounds such as low molecular weight aromatic and aliphatic acids, phenols, and other products. This application describes methods of using OHD technology to break down macromolecular and heterogeneous materials such as bituminous sands, coal, lignocellulosic biomass, and kerogen to produce specific products that are currently used or are potentially useful to the chemical industry, as well as other products.